“fatal: remote origin already exists” with nested git repository folders

Question

I have a folder inside a git repository which should be its own repository.

I do not want to use the git submodules or whatever they provide.

I have done this multiple times before and it always worked but now there seems to be something wrong.

Inside the nested folder I do this:

git remote add origin https://bitbucket.org/team/repo

and I get this:

fatal: remote origin already exists.

I think whats happening is that it recognised the git repository thats one folder above and therefore isnt allowing me to set one up in it. But I KNOW that I have done this before and its working with the other folders. When I do "git status" in the working ones I get a status that shows the sub repo and not the overlying one.

What can I do to tell git to ignore the top one and pretend like its not there?

EDIT: Here is what DOES work:

Instead of creating the folder and doing git remote add origin ... I straight away just clone the existing repo. Then I end up with a working subfolder with its own origin. (Am I already using submodules now or is this in fact a work around?)

EDIT2: This question is about HOW to solve the nesting problem. The possible duplicate however is about WHY the solution found in the anwsers works the way it does.

Answer 1

The solution to having nested repo's like I described is either just cloning the wanted repo inside the other or creating the folder, navigating inside and running both git init as well as git remote add origin .

The latter wont work without git init